Companies are taking a fresh approach to be agile and efficient and are going digital on the shop floor

Sekar Udayamurthy, CEO and Co-founder, Jidoka Technologies talks about shifts and emerging trends in pharma manufacturing such as digitising the shop floor, techniques and technologies taking centre stage in pharma manufacturing, the company's plans for the Indian pharma market and more, in an interview with Lakshmipriya Nair

- Lakshmipriya Nair

Tell us about the shifts and emerging trends in pharma manufacturing. What are the causative agents of these changes?

The two big emerging trends are - Pharma 4.0 and Big Data, and IIOT.

AI Partners with Big Data, harnessing human reasoning to provide cognitive insights.

The large volumes of data available throughout the drug discovery and development process require high-performance systems to properly analyse the data and derive value from it. The advancement in analytical techniques is also turning historical and real-time data available with pharma companies into valuable assets for predictive, diagnostic, prescriptive, and descriptive analytics.

Robotic and industrial automation technology combined with artificial intelligence has become the key agent to help move manufacturing from a process-based (current practice) to knowledge-based manufacturing.

This allows organisations to transform from taking reactive decisions to predictive and proactive insights and actions - making manufacturing more consistent and accurate, with higher throughput. It also allows organisations to catch any potential problem before it damages a product that may cause a costly shutdown, a massive product recall, or equipment replacement.

Industry 4.0 and Digital Twin convergence of information technology and operational technology for manufacturing. Industry 4.0 can be considered the next generation of continuous improvement.

Medicine spending in India is projected to grow 912 per cent over the next five years, leading India to become one of the top 10 countries in terms of medicine spending. To cater to this, the industry will need to upgrade and upskill its processes.